4 ms·

I agree. I'm not a published writer, but it seems to me that the expense of selling books printed on trees might be the problem? In my naive way of thinking abo

I agree. I'm not a published writer, but it seems to me that the expense of selling books printed on trees might be the problem? In my naive way of thinking about it, I feel like the author should just cut out the middle-man (publisher) altogether, put together an ebook (with some kind of free tool like latex, or html, or what-have-you) and then press the "publish" button which either places it on stores like Amazon, or simply sells directly off the author's own site. This is almost zero production cost and all margin. I'm an avid reader, and have all the walls of my apartment plastered with shelves of dead tree shavings, but I've noticed lately (like maybe within the last 3-5 years since the kindle and tablets have come out) that I don't buy physical books anymore; the reading experience on an electronic devices is sufficient, and the lower price of an ebook is attractive. With the amount of books I buy, I'm ok with trading a little bit of nostalgia and ephemeral tactility for "2 books for the price of 1". Putting words into my head is the main thing, and authors can put words into people's heads (and make a profit) on their own now: 1. write a book, 2. convert to ebook format and make available online, 3. sprinkle with marketing voodoo (which I think any book author could do: blog, tweet, email, link to book, etc.)

the_watcher 13y ago
This seems to be the real forward. The old distribution model for books has changed forever. While it makes it much harder for traditional independent publishers to print physical books, the barrier to entry as a publisher has been reduced so much that it really represents a step change in the industry. Anyone can publish an ebook, or release Kindle singles as a marketing strategy (or to create new forms of books closer to the old serials that Dickens and the like wrote). Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferris, Tucker Max, Ryan Holiday (just the people I know off the top of my head) have written extensively about how they have self-published their way to best seller lists. Asking people to pay you to keep your outdated business model working doesn't strike me as the best plan.

the_watcher 13y ago

This seems to be the real forward. The old distribution model for books has changed forever. While it makes it much harder for traditional independent publishers to print physical books, the barrier to entry as a publisher has been reduced so much that it really represents a step change in the industry. Anyone can publish an ebook, or release Kindle singles as a marketing strategy (or to create new forms of books closer to the old serials that Dickens and the like wrote). Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferris, Tucker Max, Ryan Holiday (just the people I know off the top of my head) have written extensively about how they have self-published their way to best seller lists. Asking people to pay you to keep your outdated business model working doesn't strike me as the best plan.